After this creative period marred by drug abuse, Colwell worked for Rip Off Press as a colorist, also contributing stories, artwork, or production to many underground comic book titles and anthologies. Ĭolwell left the Good Times after the paper ceased publication and concentrated on doing paintings and a few comic books until the mid 1980s.
He was financially unable to continue art school as planned but deeply committed to painting as his life work, so was mainly self-taught thereafter.ĭuring the turbulent 1970s scene in San Francisco, Colwell worked as an illustrator for the underground paper Good Times and joined the commune that produced this weekly. His experiences there and the period after his release were the genesis of his underground comix series Inner City Romance, published by Last Gasp beginning in 1972. When he had worked an almost two-year stint as a sculptor for Mattel, and was preparing his return to college, he was arrested for draft refusal and sentenced to two years in federal prison at McNeil Island Corrections Center, in Washington state. After completing two years there, he dropped out to travel and get some life and work experience. Colwell studied art at the California College of Arts and Crafts.
